Members’ Shopping at shopAGO

November 9th, 2011

From November 22th through 27th, AGO Members receive 20% off regular priced merchandise and 15% off jewellery at shopAGO!

Exquisite jewellery. Luxurious art books and catalogues. Unique stocking stuffers. Delightful toys and books for little hands. And much, much more!

As a Member, you always get a discount at shopAGO. During Members’ Shopping Week, drop in often and enjoy the extra savings — just in time for the gift-giving season.

*Regular Member’s Discount is 10%. Promotional discounting of 15% and 20% is in lieu of, not in addition to, regular discount of 10%. Please note, no further discounts apply to previously reduced merchandise, sales items and Mourlot Archival Prints. See Sales Associates in-store for further details.

Special events during the Member’s Shopping Event include:

 Sprucewood Shortbread Sampling – Tuesday, November 22nd  12pm to 6pm

 Anne Sportun Trunk Show -  Wednesday, November 23rd  12pm to 8pm

 Jack Chambers: Light, Spirit, Time, Place and Life book signing with Dennis Reid

Wednesday, November 23rd  6pm – 8pm

Dandi Maestre – Friday, November 25th   12pm to 4pm

 He Named Her Amber book launch with Iris Haussler and David Moos

Saturday, November 26th  2pm to 4pm

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Vanity Fair’s Todd Eberle: Liveblog

October 21st, 2011

Starting at noon today, Vanity Fair’s photographer-at-large Todd Eberle will be giving a talk about his new book, Empire of Space. If you couldn’t make it out to hear him speak, you can follow along on our Liveblog right here instead! You can find out more about Todd at http://www.toddeberle.com/ Holly, Internet & Social Media Content Coordinator

12.02 Weston Family Learning Centre seminar room 3 is packed to the rafters. Clearly lots of anticipation for this talk!

12.05 Todd Eberle is here, looking dapper in trademark hat and scarf.

12.05 Program Coordintor Gilian McIntyre is introducing TE. “Eberle is best known for his interpretative photographs of iconic subject matter.”

12.07 TE is on stage talking about his new book, released back in April. ‘It represents a 30 year span of time and took me three years to compile.’

‘I photograph a number of disparate subjects which is unusual… People rarely go beyond their boundaries. Taking a photograph of something immortalises, elevates it and I get to photograph a lot of iconic things.’

‘Walker Evans had a book where every spread was a pair of images with some relationship to each other. This idea inspired me – you can riff on this pairing idea.’

12.11 TE is going to show us some spreads from his book. The first shows a pair of pictures which reference Chanel.

‘Once I started to pursue the idea of pairs I began to think very abstractly.’

12.14 TE is talking about his obsession with high modernism.

Next shot: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water
I took 5 shots of this building as a teenager – it’s the oldest picture in the book.

‘I’m formally untrained and completely self-taught. I understood that there’s a relationship between art and architecture which is often overlooked.’

12.17 Next shot: Hilary Clinton/Florence Noel
‘I get to meet alot of interesting people… This was the first attempt to soften Hilary’s image which wasn’t completely successful. I knew she was self-conscious about her calves so I made an attempt to hide it.’

‘Florence in this picture – celebration of the last of the living modernists – she became v private and only agreed to be photographed because a friend agreed to participate in this series.’

12.21 ‘There are a number of people in my book who are no longer livi. I’m happy they get to be memorialised in a nice way.’

12.23 ‘I started to see in pairs – like the rotunda of Thomas Jefferson’s house and CERN’s hadron collider.’ (Two striking circular images – HK)

12.25 Shot: Photograph from the roof of the Whitehouse on a day Clinton had gone to Kosovo – there was a marine helicopter practice/ the same Whitehouse lawn during the Obama inauguration.

12.28 TE is talking about the challenges and pressures he faced in shooting/documenting the Oval Office. ‘I photographed the President’s POV of the office.’

12.30 Shot: Bedroom in the nose of Airforce One (during Clinton’s presidency)/TE’s Grandparents’ House
Harrison Ford was allowed on board to take notes prior to filming the movie.

12.33 Shot: Sunset in Conneticut/Sunset in a Frederick Church painting
‘I started to see the world in a different light as a result of the book.’

12.37 Shot: A pair of garden paths – TE’s grandmother redrafted her garden – this is her garden prior to a visit from Martha Stewart, and again years later when she had lost her sight.’ (Very neat to overgrown – HK)

‘The book became about time, memory, history, loss, destruction, age.’

12.43 ‘My boyfriend sequenced the shots in such a way that it became a narrative, a biography.’

12.45 TE is showing a series of pairings between drag queens and Rorsach-esque flowers, a homage to Andy Warhol.

12.48 Shot: Iggy Pop portrait/ a distressed black sofa (the cover of the book). ‘A fetishished detail of a destroyed Barcelona chair.’

12.50 Floor is now open for questions.

Q Do you use photoshop?
A I use it in a subtle way. I tweak little things but you could hardly see the difference. I heighten the colour occasionally.

Q Has the book changed how you think about the world?
A I see in pairs now – it’s bizarre

‘I don’t know why people would bother with film.’

Todd will be signing copies of his book in ShopAGO for the next hour. We hope you’ve enjoyed tuning in to this live blog session.

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The Walrus Toronto Project Debate: Be It Resolved that Toronto will Never Be Beautiful

October 12th, 2011

Back again for my second live blog of the day. This time we’ll be hearing what a selection of Toronto’s finest have to say about our city. Is it beautiful? Could it be beautiful? Or do we have to resign ourselves to aesthetic mediocrity? Here’s some info about the event…..

“Four prominent Torontonians in two teams will be debating what it takes to make Toronto beautiful, and whether we have the infrastructure, ideas, and resources to do so. This will encompass politics, the arts, architecture, the business community, culture, and Toronto’s local communities. Featuring Jack Diamond and John Barber vs. Nick Mount and Stephen Marche with moderator Amanda Lang and provocation by Denise Balkissoon, Yvonne Bambrick, Matt Galloway and Albert Schultz.”

You can also follow The Walrus’ @davidpleonard for tweets from event, and you should also check out their Toronto Project Soapbox Site for lots more hot Toronto debate. Our liveblog starts at 7pm EST – stay tuned! – Holly, Internet & Social Media Content Coordinator.

Jack Diamond = AD
John Barber = JB
Nick Mount = AM
Stephen Marche = SM
Amanda Lang = AL

18.54 Really busy already – think we’re in for a lively night!

19.00 Opening remarks from the AGO’s Adult Program Coordinator, Gillian McIntyre. ‘We really want the AGO to be a forum for discussion and to play a role in this city. TOnight is out live on Walrus TV.

19.02 Shelley Ambrose, publisher, The Walrus is telling us about the magazine. The foundation has a mandate to stir up debate – the cover of this issue features a story about the state of Toronto – the beginning of a conversation that continues here and on Soapbox. The hashtag for tonight is #TODebate.

‘If this is your first walrus debate, do not be fooled by the position they have have been asked to take. Not all of our debaters necessarily agree with what they are arguing.’

19.06 AL ‘My role is a neutral one… An interesting exercise for a working journalist.’

‘Be it resolved that there be mention of ferris wheels.’ – gets a laugh from the audience.

The speakers are being introduced – architect Jack Diamond, journalist and committed cyclist John Barber (for the motion) and fiction editor of The Walrus, Nick Mount and novelist Stephen Marche (against)

19.12 JD ‘I want to make it clear that we’re not talking about it’s liveability. We’re talking about beauty. There’s general consensus that cities like Paris and Dublin are beautiful – why? They are lucky enough to be built at a time when architecture of fine detail was prevalent. When you lift your eyes in these cities, your heart is also lifted.

19.14 In Toronto… The constitutional arrangement is not about to change anytime soon. The likelihood of provincial politicians giving up fiscal power to the city is as likely as our opponents winning the debate!’

‘Presbyterian narrowness and architectural mediocrity’ – JD describing Toronto.

19.17 NM ‘After the first world war a group of artists refused to produce beautiful art for a society they felt turned Europe into a wasteland. Art would no longer be beautiful – Duchamp’s toilet is the most influential art piece of the 20th century art. Beauty is not the point. Ugly is the new beauty. Where art led, cities followed. Most North American cities were built at a time in which educated taste was hostile to beauty. But there is an emerging trend towards beauty – places like the Brickworks, Dufferin Grove.’

‘There is nothing inevitable about our tastes or out cities – Toronto can be beautiful if we want it to be.’

19.23 JB ‘Toronto has an affinity for ugliness built into it’s DNA. JB is showing ugly photos of Toronto.

‘It dwarfs any other aspect of the city. I can’t imagine saying this is beautiful. This is Toronto the ‘good enough.’ Toronto is about harmony, affordability. Democracy is not a beautiful thing – it is messy.’

19.27 SM ‘Every city has horrible suburbs, including Paris. The point of this debate hinges on the word never – never is a long time. I think it’s an impossible argument to make – even compared to 10 years ago the city is unrecognisable.’

‘The beautiful city we could build comes from money and talent and will. I believe we have all three.’

‘Torontonians care for beauty now. Even Rob Ford, with his limited imagination, understood that something beautiful needed to happen with his ferris wheel. Beauty is an essential part of living in an urban metropolis.’

19.32 JD ‘Noone questions the fact that people want it to be beautiful. The question is about the money. We have the huge millstone of what we have already built. The circumstances are such it is not possible to achieve.’

19.34 SM ‘If we get as good as New York, everyone in this room would be happy with it.’

19.36 JB ‘The images I showed you are of a city of becoming.. Created by people who arrive in the city and want to get a hold on something.’

19.37 JB ‘Contemporary cities are ugly. Apart from in North Korea.’

19.40 SM ‘Postmodern architecture is very well represented in Toronto and it’s very beautiful.’

19.42 AL opens up the floor to the provocateurs.

‘We have to reframe the debate – how can we put the beautiful software on top of e hardware of the city, if the hardware is unchangeable? What can we do with the human infrastructure to make this a beautiful city.’

JD ‘The growing disparity in incomes is the root cause of a great deal of problems.’
JB ‘I believe physical beauty doesn’t much matter – it’s misconstrued by rich people.’

19.49 SM is defending beauty. ‘There are no reproductions of Damien Hirsts in hospital gift shops. Beauty brings us together in times of grief and times of joy.’

19.52 PRovocateur 2, Yvonne Bambrick.
‘As a cyclist I’m interested in th way people move between the beautiful spaces in the city.’

JD ‘Toronto doesn’t favour the pedestrian. Narrowing the roads is progress in my view – we lack the finesse here. In winter we provide little protection above ground. Imagine Toronto with protected streets? We don’t respond to the city by responsive context.

SM ‘It doesn’t mean we can’t improve – I do not find the car to be incompatible with beauty.’

19.57 JB ‘The lack of ambition here is terrible – Toronto could be Amsterdam for cycling but we dont confront the issues.

19.58 Provocateur 3 – Matt Galloway
‘I’ve had beautiful moments in this city waiting for a haircut – get out of the downtown core and pay more attention. We talk down about the city enough – we don’t talk about what is beautiful at a grass roots level. Do we need to change how we think before we are able to be beautiful?

JM ‘We have this thing where we say we’re either Paris, France or Paris, Ontario. BOth of this ideas are excuses. We need to use talent and political will to create beauty.

JB ‘I agree now is the moment… But it’s not happening.’

20.02 Provocateur 4 – Denise Balkissoon
‘The New York Times said Toronto has no street fashion – what is the individual responsibility for beauty?’

JD ‘We have heterogeneous taste in Toronto – which means we don’t have a conventional beauty.

20.06 Final Provocateur – John Lorinc
‘Have we been paying attention to beauty in the wrong spot? Should we be thinking about the ravines?’

SM ‘we’re going to be built on the terms of the 21st century. Just because we’re not Medieval doesn’t mean we can’t be beautiful.’

AL is sharing the Soapbox question – is public space without art a missed opportunity?

NM ‘We surrendered beauty to billboards.’
JD ‘Art needs to be designed with the space, with the buildings – set pieces that work well frame the vista. I don’t think dumping it is a solution.’

20.12
It’s now time for questions from the audience….

‘Can you imagine a person from Vancouver or Newfoundland saying, ‘ahhh, beautiful Toronto?’

JD ‘No, but they come for the film festival.’
SM ‘I think people do say that – the fluidity is a beautiful and unique aspect of Toronto.’
JD ‘We dont develop a huge base in schools for the arts – we kill it. There’s no opportunity to develop.’
SM ‘We’re living in a renaissance – I disagree there’s no matrix for artistic activity in the city.’

Audience Q ‘What is the appropriate role of the use of power?’
JD ‘It’s important not to have aesthetic police.’

NM ‘We need younger people, less white people, more women – architecture is dominated by old White men – it’s time to let the other kids play in the sand box.

20.21 Audience Q ‘Who is the decider if what is beautiful?’

NM ‘There’s not so much disagreement about what is beautiful. Empirical research shows that we all agree – across gender, race, age.’

AL We’re at time!

Gillian McIntire is back on stage to thank the participants. Thank you to everyone that tuned in to the blog – have a great evening!

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Nice To Tweet You: An interview with Cory Doctorow

September 7th, 2011

The AGO’s ‘Nice To Tweet You’ series connects our Twitter followers with artists, curators, speakers and experts. We tell you who’s in the hot seat and then you are able to submit your questions to us via Twitter @agoToronto using the #NTTY hashtag.

Our interviewee this week is Boing Boing co-founder Cory Doctorow. As well as founding one of the web’s most insightful and entertaining sites, Cory is also a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger. Thank you so much to everyone that submitted questions – here is what Cory had to say:

Is CC sufficient to fix the problems with copyright? Should solutions build upon copyright or is an overhaul necessary?
I think you’ve got an OR gate where you want an AND gate. CC isn’t sufficient to solve copyright’s problems — look at all the fans under threat of lawsuit, and all the musicians and other artists who conspicuously fail to benefit from those lawsuits. But CC is an important instrumental and strategic tool — it helps creators “live as though it were the first days of a better nation”; and it establishes facts in evidence that there is no universal consensus that “all rights reserved” is what every artist wants or needs.

You seem optimistic about the the future freedom and creativity? Is that because of the technology, or humanity itself?
 I’m a pessimist because I think things could get very bad if we don’t do something. I’m an optimist because I believe that technology makes it easier than ever for people to work together to get stuff done.

How can copyright serve as an incentive to creativity?
I think that there’s a long continuum of motives and prerequisites for creativity. Some people have a creation within them that can only see the light of day in the absence of broad, automatic copyright (you could never produce the Beastie Boys’ PAUL’S BOUTIQUE in today’s copyright regime, for example). Some works require enormous cash investment and the bulk of investors want expansive, exclusive rights before they stump up cash.

It seems to me that the trick is to formulate cultural policy that allows the greatest diversity of expressions and creators. So, for example, we could fix a formula for pricing music samples:

Gross revenue / (Number of seconds in song/number of seconds in sample/number of other samples layered over that sample)

(or some variation thereupon)

That would make it possible to sample gratis if you have no expectation of income, would pay artists (not lawyers), and would allow Paul’s Boutique to be made today without bankrupting the band. Or we might decide that the best solution is to make sampling preemptively fair dealing (analogous to the decision to exempt fashion from exclusive rights). Determining the right answer is something that we could arrive at through evidence: go and survey a lot of musicians, try a small-scale experiment, see what happens, refine as you go.

But that requires copyright to be viewed as a mere instrument of policy, not an inherent right — that’s something pretty controversial at the moment. But the instrumental view of copyright is at the core of all copyright solutions.

With the societal recognition in recent years that (musical) artists deserve compensation for users who illegally download their music, are we making progress in the public discussion on internet copyright? (as it pertains to creative industries?)
Not that I can see. I think Charlie Angus feinted in the right direction, but then lost the right path. We have societies that offer blanket licenses to radio stations and live venues enabling them to play any music they want. Why not offer ISPs similar (opt-in) licenses that legalize their users downloading of any music they can find, from any source, using any protocol? That’d pay artists, legalize fans, and get us all on the same side. We’d have thorny problems (the analytics and division of income), but these are implementation details. Maybe we could prototype a good implementation by ripping apart our current collectives, holding them to account for their vast administrative overheads and secretive policies on expenditures, and reinvent them as the transparent, Internet-era institutions we need today.

In your opinion, how does Canada stack up against other nations’ efforts in the area of internet copyright?
Pretty poor. C-32 is proof positive that if the USA jumped off the CN Tower, Canada would do it too. James Moore and Tony Clement’s account of why we need the same disastrous  WIPO-plus protection for DRM that the US has been drowning in since 1998 was an incoherent mumble that basically came out as “The US Trade Rep demands it, and we haven’t the guts to stand up to him.”

Internet copyright is one of those issues that seems to catch policymakers’ attention for a while, and then it drops off of their radar.  What needs to happen to keep this issue front and centre in their minds?
I think we need to stop talking about copyright and start talking about Internet policy. You can’t make an Internet copyright law without making a law that touches on all the other stuff we do with the net: civics, politics, family life, friendship, health, employment, education. Let’s stop pretending there’s an “Internet copyright policy” that stands distinct from Internet policy, period.

Cory Doctorow is at the AGO on Wednesday, September 14 to give a talk,  ’Can creativity and freedom peacefully co-exist in the Internet age?’
Wednesday, September 14, 7-8:30 pm
Weston Family Learning Centre
FREE 

To find out more about the interview please contact Holly Knowlman via email, Twitter or call 416 979 6660 (ext 426)

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